


We Were, Once

by stereomer



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-14
Updated: 2012-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-07 17:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereomer/pseuds/stereomer





	We Were, Once

Frank drives them to the old drive-in lot one night, despite the tiny LED light on the dashboard that signals low fuel. It blinks red like a siren, triggering too many conditioned images in Regina's mind; when the automated voice - always a woman's voice, it was strange, really - echoes the message, Frank tells it to shut up. Which is pointless, because the car is way too old to have a response feature programmed into it, but it's Frank and he doesn't always need a reason.   
  
They chug through the city, tumbling over the structural rubble that grab at the tires. Regina blinks and stares aimlessly out the window, watching the shantytowns streak by all in blurs of greys and dark blues. Once they pass the sign for the drive-in, with its aging paint and shattered face, Frank easily navigates and swings the car around to an empty clearing amidst the piles of dead electronics and rotting, mottled cardboard. The lot itself had closed down decades ago, lights and laughter replaced by this -   
  
"Shithole," Frank comments, talking around the cigarette that hangs from his lips. He yanks up the parking brake and turns off the engine. "What a shithole."   
  
Regina rolls down the window and holds her hand out, experimentally turning it at different angles to feel the air. "Oh, it's not so bad," she says. If she closes her eyes and concentrates on the soft bite of wind against her fingertips, she might be able to pretend at freedom.   
  
Frank shifts in his seat. When she opens her eyes, she sees that he has turned his body toward her, with one knee pressing against the gear shift - is watching her crook her fingers one at a time. He exhales smoke and finally removes the cigarette from his mouth with his hand.   
  
(His hands, hands that are always covered in those gloves with the tips cut off in order to hide the unnatural colors that are soaked into the skin of his fingers. He'd gotten those done the day they had passed the decree banning identification marks. It was a stupid thing to do, to risk being taken for such an insignificant act of defiance. But of course, it wasn't about that.   
  
_It's Frank and he doesn't always need a reason_ .)   
  
"You've been here before," she states, even though it's supposed to be a question.   
  
Frank smiles wryly, looks away and out the windshield. "Well, yeah. you said you liked open areas. I had to check it out and find a nice place for us, didn't I?"   
  
And now she remembers him sneaking out a couple nights ago, claiming to go to a pick-up that she didn't know about. She brings her hand back in; when she rests it on Frank's knee, it's warm to the touch. There's a tiny shift of bone and tendons under her palm as she starts to say something but changes her mind - she leans forward and kisses him instead. It's warm and fuzzy with smoke, and Frank is almost unbearably soft, leaving the only contact between them to be their lips and her hand on his knee.   
  
A tiny push of wind comes through the windows when she slips her other hand up underneath the scarf that winds three times around his neck and brushes her knuckles blindly against the black ink she knows to be there. (When she kisses his ear, her chin pushes against it). She can taste nicotine in the back of her mouth now, hard and stale, but dismissable. The taste, the touch, the smell, the noise - with her eyes closed, she can almost imagine the flickering images being projected over the big white screens, the scratchy dialogue of scripted lines and film music; the grand finale, the rolling credits, and Frank breathing quiet against her cheek.   
  
  


**

  


> Regina had seen Frank around all the usual places that were safe for those organizing the beginnings of the resistance, but they hadn't ever gotten more than twenty feet of each other. She really meets him after the first wave of  _Operation: Lightstorm_ gets launched out in the more sparsely populated areas as a test run of sorts. It's another hazy day, one where the sun seems to suck up all color, and she's standing on the sidewalk in front of a media store along with a crowd of seven or eight, all of them watching the televisions displayed inside the windows. Each screen has a different width and tint but they all show the same newscast: shaky videofeeds of entire blocks up in flames, the bobbing shadows of looters and riot police in the streets, pillars of grey smoke billowing up into the sky like columns to heaven.
> 
> "A glimpse of the future," someone beside her says, and when she looks over, a pair of green eyes is looking back down at her. Albeit not very much down, seeing as the height disparity between them is next to none.
> 
> The first thing she says to him is, "Don't want that to get cold", while nodding to the coffee cup in his hand. A coffee cup full of bootleg whiskey.
> 
> He smiles.
> 
> *
> 
>   
> 
> 
> She was a piano player, she said. Not a pianist. They find an upright piano in one of the abandoned neighborhoods that have been reduced to ten square miles of bare foundations and walls missing entire corners, interiors half-exposed to the open air. The keys are dusted over and several of the black ones stick, ringing together in dissonant waves, but it plays.  _She_  plays, fingers skating over the keys, easy as anything and surprised that she remembers this much. They come back the next night and she teaches him how to play one of the only pieces she can extract from her memory whole and untouched, a prelude written centuries ago. He's a quick learner and starts to play it by himself, hesitant but hitting the right notes.
> 
> When she starts unwinding his scarf, she expects him to stop playing and grasp her wrists to still her movements like he's done every other time. But he doesn't, and so she continues slowly, loop by loop, as if guiding a dancer through pirouettes until his neck is exposed, smooth and alabaster white in the room full of dark shadows. He keeps his attention on the keys as the right hand comes in with the melody, the easy stretch of an octave.
> 
> "Frank," she says softly. He finally lets his hands drop from the piano; the abrupt movement leaves a balloon of silence. When she touches the ink, he turns to her and grins wide, all teeth. But all she asks is, "Did it hurt?" while pressing it gingerly.
> 
> He swallows, says, "No, not - no."
> 
> It wasn't that skin markings were unheard of. She just didn't know anyone eager enough to make themselves stand out - to make it easier to get picked from a crowd and taken away. "Play it again," she says after a moment, nodding at the piano. She's not touching him anymore.
> 
> He plays it again. She joins in when the song speeds up and it's both their hands moving over the keys, pushing out melodies that no one else can hear.
> 
> *
> 
>   
> Thanks to sources and Frank's knowledge of the underground pipes, they find a church to stay in - a timelessly old stone structure with surprisingly little damage. In a rare moment of optimism, Frank comments on how it's nice to see some things remaining undisturbed by the world outside its walls. The ceilings are high and sloping, the pews are dusty.
> 
> They watch the sunset from the chipped steps on the first night there. There's a small, makeshift cemetery to their right; angular, hand-engraved words are carved into the fence:
>
>> > here lie the  
> unrested souls   
> of those  
> departed but  
> not yet found  
>   - may god  
> have the mercy  
> to end it  
> all.  
> 
> 
>   
> Regina reads them silently. Frank smokes and watches the birds circling in the sky. When it grows dark, he flicks away the dead cigarette and leads her back inside - she's glad for this, if only because then it means he can take off those gloves and she can press her palms against his. The noises they make echo around the empty space; Frank cups her knees with his bare hands, fingers curling protectively over the curves. She has small, pale thighs, and he kisses them open as she closes her eyes.
> 
> *
> 
>   
> It had been a sound pulsating through her head, unnaturally originating in the tiny domino collapse of her inner ear and making its way outward. She'd felt nauseous, unbearably sick at the slow-beating sensation; she had pressed the heels of her wrists against her temples but it had done nothing, absolutely nothing. By the time she fell, her eyes were already closed as she lapsed into unconsciousness.
> 
> When she wakes up, she's back in the church. It's almost dark and she waits for her eyes to adjust before she croaks, "What was it."
> 
> Frank is sitting with his back against the wall, knees folded up to his chest and acting as pillows for his elbows. "Sonar pulse," he answers. He sniffs and leans his head back too, looking down at her through hooded eyes. The black beanie pulled down low over his forehead, the road-torn shoes, the way the light falls over the curve of his throat; he's the picture of defiance, and it makes Regina smile.
> 
> "Not that bad," she says in response to the fear that creeps through in the tight set of his mouth. It actually is pretty bad - the base of her spine is uncomfortably stiff, and her ears feel swollen, grossly huge, but she won't ever admit it. Strange, how the memory of pain is always just out of reach until the next time it's experienced. "I've always wondered how they felt."
> 
> And she has. They're extremely short-range devices, probably only with an effective radius of fifteen feet at most, but much safer for the wielder since it requires no actual contact. The mechanism of the whole thing made it almost impossible to imagine - to watch someone fall by no discernible cause, knuckles drumming against the crumbling asphalt in dull, arrhythmic patterns. It was hard to empathize and easy to keep walking.
> 
> "You're lucky we got you out," Frank says, biting at his thumb, bottom teeth pressing into the fleshy part.
> 
> "I was just collateral damage," she replies, ignoring the whole swooning, helpless dame treatment. "I'm guessing they were going for the man beside me, the one with the Gatling shoved into his pants?"
> 
> Frank shrugs, and Regina knows that they weren't able to get to the man in time. "I couldn't give less of a shit about that," he says in a rough voice, unknowingly responding to her thoughts as he crawls toward her and messily presses his mouth against hers.
> 
> *
> 
>   
> They find her one day while she's waiting for Frank at their corner by the old media store - except that particular media store had gotten bombed out several weeks ago. She's looking down at the magazine that Frank had dropped and suddenly they're there, as one black boot out of a sea of them crushes the spine of the magazine.
> 
> ("Good to know that fashion hasn't changed much," Frank commented without looking up. He flipped the page and then turned it sideways. "Good to know that the standard of beauty hasn't either, Jesus," he whistled, waggling his eyebrows exaggeratedly.
> 
> Regina laughed and playfully slapped at the magazine but he'd already loosened his hold on it as he smiled at her. It fell easily from his hands, pages unfurling, and landed in a crumbled fan of paper. Words and pictures spilled over the ground. The wind pulled at them, and at Regina's hair; Frank tucked the strands back and kept his fingers curled around the shell of her ear.)
> 
> "We've seen you," one of them says with a grin. "Playing that piano at night when you think no one's around. That neighborhood is still part of our watch grid, didn't you know?"
> 
> "I'm sorry," she says after allowing a pause to feign confusion. It's a lost cause, but she can't stop herself from trying. "I think you have the wrong person." Her heart is pounding audibly; she tries to leave but the man at the front sticks his arm out and grabs her around the waist. Later, she'll say she was lucky - after all, they let her be, didn't they?
> 
> "Musician, huh?" The man grins and wraps a fist around her pinky.
> 
> She starts to say, "No, no, please - ", but then there's a crack as her bones are snapped out of place and she closes her eyes and screams out loud.
> 
> *
> 
>   
> They're lying down on their sides, facing each other with their legs pulled up so their knees and their toes touch.
> 
> "Good night," she says. Frank just looks at her with a quiet smile and her breathing stumbles a tiny bit. She starts to wonder how long it will take before that stops happening, but then she decides she doesn't want it to. He pulls her hand up to his mouth and kisses the inside of her wrist, breathing briefly against the abnormal angles of the last three fingers on her right hand. They had set that way after a couple of days. She'd declined the rebreaking-resetting procedure. Frank hadn't argued.
> 
> "I'm glad we met," he murmurs.  
> 

  


**

  
The waiting - the waiting is what's killing them all, one slow day at a time. She wonders when it'll happen. She wonders  _how_  it'll happen. A strong grasp on her elbow, perhaps - fingers wrapping around the tender muscle of her arm, a nameless grip from behind her, and then she'll be dragged to who-knows-where. Dragged away, not dragged toward, as her heels scrape against the streets and she watches her home get farther and farther away.   
  
Or maybe it'll be a bomb. They'll go nuclear, having decided that  _Operation: Lightstorm_  was a success elsewhere. Tinny whistling as the only warning; people's faces tilted up towards the sky, features twisted with grim anticipation. The bomb leaving a white tail in its wake like foam in the sea, and then  _boom_ , the impact, and maybe she'll even hear the sound of the explosion, but maybe not. Maybe there will just be light and no sound. Maybe she will open her mouth to scream as soon as the unbearably bright flash lights up everything around her, but there will be no time before it vaporizes them all. Flashes their beings into nothing but shadows splashed upon walls and concrete - a black silhouette with thoughts of ash and a heart of brick; of someone with curly hair and a slightly open mouth, saying,  _Yes. We were._


End file.
